Race to 52 - 17 days remaining

Too much TV last night. I was hoping to make some serious progress in Lowboy, but I watched the end of Beetlejuice and a favorite episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. That cost me a half hour of reading time. I read a bit after that, but it was getting late and I get up early on Thursdays. That will probably come back to haunt me tonight. I'll likely be passing out early. Oh well. I'm hoping to make my kids do some reading time so that could be a solid 20 minutes. I could potentially grab another 10 or 15 minutes while they're watching TV. 

I read a few pages of Swann's Way this morning. I missed my 10 page quota. I may pick up some more pages tonight, but I'm leaning towards Lowboy. Tomorrow is a couple's vacation day so who knows what kind of reading I'll get in. 

Race to 52 - 18 days remaining

I'm feeling like this is possible again after making it through a quarter of Lowboy, a book that I picked up with a B&N gift card my wife gave me for my birthday a couple of years ago, in about an hour last night. Lowboy is a shortish book, 250 pages or so, with lots of white space on each page. I should be able to finish this one by the end of the week, Friday orSaturday. I wasn't really feeling the book in the first couple dozen pages, but I was hooked by the time I closed the book for the night. I'm hoping to ride this momentum and get through another big chunk tonight. I've already read my daily quota of Swann's Way so I can focus on Lowboy. Note that The Caine Mutiny is not really in play at the moment. I did not fully appreciate the heft of that book when I started reading it. It's fantastic and something that I will definitely get back to, but I need to see significant progress from my reading time right now. Reading a book for the sake of finishing a book is not the noblest of motivations, but that's where I am right now. 

I'm going to read no matter what. It's just a question of what I choose to read. Making progress towards 52 books is the way I want to spend my reading time right now. Lowboy gets me there faster than The Caine Mutiny. There is also something to be said for the amount of time that has passed since I bought a particular book. Reading something I've been skipping over for awhile feels like it's more in the spirit of Bookshelf Zero. I've had Lowboy longer than Caine. I bought The Caine Mutiny as a Kindle Daily Deal on Christmas Day last year. I haven't had it for a year. I've had Lowboy for over 4 years. I think it lived in the drawer of my night stand for awhile after I skipped reading it for a few months and there was no room on any of my shelves. The history of Lowboy gives the progress that I've made that much more significance. Finishing the book will close a loop that I opened on Valentine's Day 2012. 

Swann's Way is the epitome of a book that feels good to read because I've been trying to read it forever. My failed previous attempts made picking it up again made it that much more intimidating to start again. The end is in sight. It will be fantastic to finish. I should really start the next volume right away. We'll see if I have the courage to keep going after finally beating volume 1.

Bookshelf Zero - 52 book in 2016 looking dicey

I could have stuck with 30 and been comfortably over my target at this point in the year. No, I saw that I was getting through a book every week, on average, a fewI'm  months into 2016 and decided that should be my target pace for the rest of the year. So here I sit with 19 days left in the year needing to finish 5 books by the end of the year to realize that goal. It's a largely arbitrary and meaningless goal. I won't win anything if I make it or get punished if I fall short. But I committed to the goal and I want to make. 

I'm nearly finished with Swann's Way. Sticking with my 10-15 page a day quota should get me through this long standing reading goal (first attempted in 1998) by Christmas. That's leaves 4. I'm almost half way through The Caine Mutiny. Good book. Thick book. I'm not sure if I'm better off leaving this one behind for a bit while I race through some shorter stuff or keep plugging away at this one with a goal of getting it wrapped up by next week. Let's just say I finish it. That leaves 3.

Nineteen days to read 3 books in their entirety while still chipping away at Swann's Way and The Caine Mutiny. I need more books like The Stranger. That was a one day read. I bought it just for that reason. It's still echoing in my brain. It makes me want to read more Camus. That desire will have to wait while I read Lowboy or The Reef of some other 200-250 page book sitting on my shelf. The books are there. I just have to find them. And find the time to read them. I have lots of days off coming. 

Finishing 5 books would lower my pending pile to 172. I want to start 2017 with no more than 175 books to read so that would give me room to pick up 3 more before the ball drops on December 31. That's the real motivation. The more books I manage to finish this year, the more I can buy before I cut myself off in 19 days.

Fast Food Farewell Tour - Taco Bell

Bean burrito, chicken burrito, soft taco, and a Cool Ranch Locos taco. And fire sauce. Always lots of fire sauce.

This was my last lunch at Taco Bell, at least for several monthsy. I will miss you. Taco Bell is like Tetris and Depeche Mode's Violator. Some elements of my young teenage years just seem to have become an indelible part of me. I may leave them behind for awhile, but I always go back. (Especially after hearing a very slick cover of Enjoy the Silence.) So this is not good-bye forever. I will make a run for the border again. I'm just going to take a break for a little while to see what happens when I stop eating highly processed factory food sold at a convenient roadside location and start eating something that can be identified as a real plant or animal. 

Shedding weight, both literary and adipose

My bookshelves are more bloated than my waistline. And they've been that way for a long time. Buying a book, or two or three, happens in just a few minutes of walking around a bookstore or poking around on the internet. Reading those same books takes just a bit longer. It's not so different from eating a few cookies or other delicious treat. It's so easy to dip those suckers into a glass of milk and scarf them down. Those couple of minutes are sublime. Skipping other delicious food or spending more time in the gym to get rid of the calories from those tasty cookies takes quite a bit more effort. 

Reducing my books to read pile and my waistline have been two long standing goals. I've been able to at least stay pretty much in place with my weight and the number of books that I own but have yet to read over the last few years. That's not good enough. I can't just drift along waiting for something to change. I have to take some action. I've been saying this for years with very little to show for it. Every year that passes marks another missed opportunity. I can't just be content with the same old holding pattern. 

I've implemented Bookshelf Zero to address my reading backlog. I will read every book that I own. With 175 books pending my attention, this is not something that will happen in a single year, but I can make a serious effort to read books that I've been wanting to read for years but have put off to read something easier or more immediately intriguing. While reading what I own is the biggest part of this challenge, limiting the number of books that I acquire is just as much a part of Bookshelf Zero as the reading. There will be no book buying in 2017. There will be no books borrowed from the library, no free books downloaded from Amazon, or reading something loaned to me by a friend. Everything I read will come from what I already own (or will own by the time 2017 rolls in). I love buying books. I know going on a buying hiatus will be hard, I've done it before, but this is an absolutely essential step to take to get Bookshelf Zero off and running. 

Running is a big part of reducing my waistline (no catchy name for this goal, at least not yet). I've already registered for a marathon in 2017. It's not until November, but my running year will be directed towards that race. But exercise is not the biggest part of getting thinner. I must be more conscious of my eating behavior. I dropped a bunch of weight about 10 years ago. I really only did two things to lose the weight. I stopped eating until I felt like I was going to be sick and I avoided desserts as much as possible. Getting back into that habit will be the big challenge this year. I love to eat almost as much as I love buying books. I haven't figured out how I'm going to handle this as the new year rolls in.

I definitely won't do what I did during my lunch today. My standard lunch is a Clif bar, a small bag of popcorn, a banana, apple, and a protein bar (after I finish lifting at the gym). I didn't pack an apple today. Rather than going a little hungry, I picked up a burrito from Taco Bell on my way back to work. It was just a bean burrito, but cutting out little things like this is the only way to lose weight. I just need to get comfortable being hungry. That's my big challenge. I almost fear being hungry. That is what I must get  over to finally lose some weight. As long as I'm running regularly, I don't really gain weight. But I don't want to just maintain. I want to reduce my weight. I must be a little hungry from time to time to make that happen.

Time to get rid of the spare tire

Any sexier?